Articles | Volume 18, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2303-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2303-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
18 Oct 2022
Research article |
| 18 Oct 2022
| 18 Oct 2022
Comparison of the green-to-desert Sahara transitions between the Holocene and the last interglacial
Huan Li
School of Geographic Science, Nantong University, Tongjingdadao 999, Nantong 226007, China
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Cluster Earth and
Climate, de Boelelaan 1085, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Hans Renssen
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Cluster Earth and
Climate, de Boelelaan 1085, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health, University of South-Eastern Norway, Gullbringvegen 36, 3800 Bø i Telemark, Norway
Didier M. Roche
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Cluster Earth and
Climate, de Boelelaan 1085, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-INSU-UVSQ-CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
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Takashi Obase, Laurie Menviel, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Tristan Vadsaria, Ruza Ivanovic, Brooke Snoll, Sam Sherriff-Tadano, Paul J. Valdes, Lauren Gregoire, Marie-Luise Kapsch, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Nathaelle Bouttes, Didier Roche, Fanny Lhardy, Chengfei He, Bette Otto-Bliesner, Zhengyu Liu, and Wing-Le Chan
Clim. Past, 21, 1443–1463, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1443-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1443-2025, 2025
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This study analyses transient simulations of the last deglaciation performed by six climate models to understand the processes driving high-southern-latitude temperature changes. We find that atmospheric CO2 and AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) changes are the primary drivers of the warming and cooling during the middle stage of the deglaciation. The analysis highlights the model's sensitivity of CO2 and AMOC to meltwater and the meltwater history of temperature changes at high southern latitudes.
Thibaut Caley, Niclas Rieger, Martin Werner, Claire Waelbroeck, Héloïse Barathieu, Tamara Happé, and Didier M. Roche
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2459, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2459, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Climate of the Past (CP).
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Density of seawater is a critical property that controls ocean dynamics. We developed the use of the δ18Oc of planktonic foraminifera as a surface paleodensity proxy for the whole ocean using Bayesian regression models calibrated to annual surface density. We reconstructed annual surface density during the last glacial maximum and late Holocene time periods. These results will be used to evaluate numerical climate models in their ability to simulate past ocean surface density.
Maxence Menthon, Pepijn Bakker, Aurélien Quiquet, Didier M. Roche, and Ronja Reese
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-777, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-777, 2025
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The ice-ocean interaction is a large source of uncertainty in future projections of the Antarctic ice sheet. Here we implement a basal ice shelf melt module (PICO) in a ice sheet model (GRISLI) and test six simple statistical methods to calibrate this module. We show that calculating the mean absolute error of bins best fits the observational datasets under multiple conditions. We also assess the impact of the module implementation and calibration choice on future projections until 2300.
Yurui Zhang, Hans Renssen, Heikki Seppä, Zhen Li, and Xingrui Li
Clim. Past, 21, 67–77, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-67-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-67-2025, 2025
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The upper and lower atmospheres interact. The polar regions, with high-speed, cyclonically rotating winds, provide a window through which upper winds affect surface weather and climate variability. By analysing climate model results, we found that ice sheets induced anomalous upward wave propagation and stretched the rotating winds towards North America, increasing the likelihood of cold-air outbreaks at the mid-latitudes. This accounts for the enhanced winter cooling at these latitudes.
Thi-Khanh-Dieu Hoang, Aurélien Quiquet, Christophe Dumas, Andreas Born, and Didier M. Roche
Clim. Past, 21, 27–51, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-27-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-27-2025, 2025
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To improve the simulation of surface mass balance (SMB) that influences the advance–retreat of ice sheets, we run a snow model, the BErgen Snow SImulator (BESSI), with transient climate forcing obtained from an Earth system model, iLOVECLIM, over Greenland and Antarctica during the Last Interglacial (LIG; 130–116 ka). Compared to the simple existing SMB scheme of iLOVECLIM, BESSI gives more details about SMB processes with higher physics constraints while maintaining a low computational cost.
Aurélien Quiquet and Didier M. Roche
Clim. Past, 20, 1365–1385, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1365-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1365-2024, 2024
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In this work, we use the same experimental protocol to simulate the last two glacial terminations with a coupled ice sheet–climate model. Major differences among the two terminations are that the ice sheets retreat earlier and the Atlantic oceanic circulation is more prone to collapse during the penultimate termination. However, for both terminations the pattern of ice retreat is similar, and this retreat is primarily explained by orbital forcing changes and greenhouse gas concentration changes.
Thomas Extier, Thibaut Caley, and Didier M. Roche
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 2117–2139, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2117-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-2117-2024, 2024
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Stable water isotopes are used to infer changes in the hydrological cycle for different time periods in climatic archive and climate models. We present the implementation of the δ2H and δ17O water isotopes in the coupled climate model iLOVECLIM and calculate the d- and 17O-excess. Results of a simulation under preindustrial conditions show that the model correctly reproduces the water isotope distribution in the atmosphere and ocean in comparison to data and other global circulation models.
Esmeralda Cruz-Silva, Sandy P. Harrison, I. Colin Prentice, Elena Marinova, Patrick J. Bartlein, Hans Renssen, and Yurui Zhang
Clim. Past, 19, 2093–2108, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023, 2023
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We examined 71 pollen records (12.3 ka to present) in the eastern Mediterranean, reconstructing climate changes. Over 9000 years, winters gradually warmed due to orbital factors. Summer temperatures peaked at 4.5–5 ka, likely declining because of ice sheets. Moisture increased post-11 kyr, remaining high from 10–6 kyr before a slow decrease. Climate models face challenges in replicating moisture transport.
Nathaelle Bouttes, Fanny Lhardy, Aurélien Quiquet, Didier Paillard, Hugues Goosse, and Didier M. Roche
Clim. Past, 19, 1027–1042, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1027-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1027-2023, 2023
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The last deglaciation is a period of large warming from 21 000 to 9000 years ago, concomitant with ice sheet melting. Here, we evaluate the impact of different ice sheet reconstructions and different processes linked to their changes. Changes in bathymetry and coastlines, although not often accounted for, cannot be neglected. Ice sheet melt results in freshwater into the ocean with large effects on ocean circulation, but the timing cannot explain the observed abrupt climate changes.
Paolo Scussolini, Job Dullaart, Sanne Muis, Alessio Rovere, Pepijn Bakker, Dim Coumou, Hans Renssen, Philip J. Ward, and Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts
Clim. Past, 19, 141–157, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-141-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-141-2023, 2023
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We reconstruct sea level extremes due to storm surges in a past warmer climate. We employ a novel combination of paleoclimate modeling and global ocean hydrodynamic modeling. We find that during the Last Interglacial, about 127 000 years ago, seasonal sea level extremes were indeed significantly different – higher or lower – on long stretches of the global coast. These changes are associated with different patterns of atmospheric storminess linked with meridional shifts in wind bands.
Frank Arthur, Didier M. Roche, Ralph Fyfe, Aurélien Quiquet, and Hans Renssen
Clim. Past, 19, 87–106, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-87-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-87-2023, 2023
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This paper simulates transcient Holocene climate in Europe by applying an interactive downscaling to the standard version of the iLOVECLIM model. The results show that downscaling presents a higher spatial variability in better agreement with proxy-based reconstructions as compared to the standard model, particularly in the Alps, the Scandes, and the Mediterranean. Our downscaling scheme is numerically cheap, which can perform kilometric multi-millennial simulations suitable for future studies.
Pepijn Bakker, Hugues Goosse, and Didier M. Roche
Clim. Past, 18, 2523–2544, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2523-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2523-2022, 2022
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Natural climate variability plays an important role in the discussion of past and future climate change. Here we study centennial temperature variability and the role of large-scale ocean circulation variability using different climate models, geological reconstructions and temperature observations. Unfortunately, uncertainties in models and geological reconstructions are such that more research is needed before we can describe the characteristics of natural centennial temperature variability.
Aurélien Quiquet, Didier M. Roche, Christophe Dumas, Nathaëlle Bouttes, and Fanny Lhardy
Clim. Past, 17, 2179–2199, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2179-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2179-2021, 2021
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In this paper we discuss results obtained with a set of coupled ice-sheet–climate model experiments for the last 26 kyrs. The model displays a large sensitivity of the oceanic circulation to the amount of the freshwater flux resulting from ice sheet melting. Ice sheet geometry changes alone are not enough to lead to abrupt climate events, and rapid warming at high latitudes is here only reported during abrupt oceanic circulation recoveries that occurred when accounting for freshwater flux.
Fanny Lhardy, Nathaëlle Bouttes, Didier M. Roche, Xavier Crosta, Claire Waelbroeck, and Didier Paillard
Clim. Past, 17, 1139–1159, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1139-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1139-2021, 2021
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Climate models struggle to simulate a LGM ocean circulation in agreement with paleotracer data. Using a set of simulations, we test the impact of boundary conditions and other modelling choices. Model–data comparisons of sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice cover support an overall cold Southern Ocean, with implications on the AMOC strength. Changes in implemented boundary conditions are not sufficient to simulate a shallower AMOC; other mechanisms to better represent convection are required.
Masa Kageyama, Sandy P. Harrison, Marie-L. Kapsch, Marcus Lofverstrom, Juan M. Lora, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Sam Sherriff-Tadano, Tristan Vadsaria, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Nathaelle Bouttes, Deepak Chandan, Lauren J. Gregoire, Ruza F. Ivanovic, Kenji Izumi, Allegra N. LeGrande, Fanny Lhardy, Gerrit Lohmann, Polina A. Morozova, Rumi Ohgaito, André Paul, W. Richard Peltier, Christopher J. Poulsen, Aurélien Quiquet, Didier M. Roche, Xiaoxu Shi, Jessica E. Tierney, Paul J. Valdes, Evgeny Volodin, and Jiang Zhu
Clim. Past, 17, 1065–1089, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1065-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1065-2021, 2021
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The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~21 000 years ago) is a major focus for evaluating how well climate models simulate climate changes as large as those expected in the future. Here, we compare the latest climate model (CMIP6-PMIP4) to the previous one (CMIP5-PMIP3) and to reconstructions. Large-scale climate features (e.g. land–sea contrast, polar amplification) are well captured by all models, while regional changes (e.g. winter extratropical cooling, precipitations) are still poorly represented.
Peter Aartsma, Johan Asplund, Arvid Odland, Stefanie Reinhardt, and Hans Renssen
Biogeosciences, 18, 1577–1599, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1577-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1577-2021, 2021
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In the literature, it is generally assumed that alpine lichen heaths keep their direct environment cool due to their relatively high albedo. However, we reveal that the soil temperature and soil heat flux are higher below lichens than below shrubs during the growing season, despite a lower net radiation for lichens. We also show that the differences in microclimatic conditions between these two vegetation types are more pronounced during warm and sunny days than during cold and cloudy days.
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Short summary
In past warm periods, the Sahara region was covered by vegetation. In this paper we study transitions from this
greenstate to the desert state we find today. For this purpose, we have used a global climate model coupled to a vegetation model to perform transient simulations. We analyzed the model results to assess the effect of vegetation shifts on the abruptness of the transition. We find that the vegetation feedback was more efficient during the last interglacial than during the Holocene.
In past warm periods, the Sahara region was covered by vegetation. In this paper we study...
